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A good pos trainer would start from scratch and teach the behavior from square one, if there was a problem with dog playing keep away.

Yup!
I have a cocker in for training at the moment, we call 'Forest Gump'!..He is a 'Bog off' out a here!..I put a 'Brace lead' on him with a 'FAT LAB' , in for boarding!..and let them 'GO'.
Win/Win I would say , and all positive without me doin a thing!

I would say it's not +r and I don't think any knowledgeable trainer would approach the problem that way. Especially a 95% positive trainer. A good pos trainer would start from scratch and teach the behavior from square one, if there was a problem with dog playing keep away.

Is the dog playing keep away with a retrieve object or with a reward object, in this scenario?

Ah, see, but yes a +r trainer WOULD deal with it this way, because it limits the dog's options to only those rewards which she happens to be providing.

It's a reward object, which OH btw is also a retrieve object since the CHASE is the reward, not the object, per se.

I have embarked on an interesting mission of late, with a bunch of +r only folks, and on film, so I can't exactly cheat.

They are trying to train a group of dogs that really have haphazard foundation work at best, most of which aren't really ready for this particular work...

So we have a few dogs that want to play keep away instead of returning the ball so we can have another repetition of the exercise.

I suggested defaulting to food for those to avoid the problem, but my all knowing colleagues (who are in charge of the program) see it differently.

So I call one in and ask how they would deal with it. The first one plays "two toy" with the dog the entire session and gets exactly 2 repetitions of the desired behavior we're trying to create. Dog made exactly 0 progress on the target behavior.

Second trainer, also +r only, stands on the leash and keeps shortening it until the self rewarding behavior is impossible, dog drops the ball and we move on to the real behavior we're training. We got a bunch of reps from that dog but not exactly in an efficient manner.

I keep the lead in my hand and make sure the dog can't go anywhere. I got the most progress out of my dog but within the limitations of the training tool, namely a 6 ft leash. That's not going to be practical forever though because this is a 50 yd exercise.

Having seen all these different styles and considering we're trying to teach dogs to handle, I thought it might be an interesting discussion for this group.

My assessment at the end of that day was that the true +r trainer thinks they have as long as it takes for any dog to learn and progress. This might well work for an amateur with nothing but one dog and unlimited time to succeed, but for those of us who deal with multiple dogs that need to be trained on a given time frame, it's not a very practical approach.

That was very evident from the three of us training. First trainer (true +r only) teaches a few puppy classes. Second trainer teaches puppy classes but also does some problem solving and has some corrective training in her background.

Every dog I train has a time frame, within which i have to achieve a certain level of training.

The approaches are clearly aligned to the circumstances in which we all train.

Yikes, Darrin! I'd say if this is your exposure to mainly pos trainers, you have some poor examples. If the toy reward is causing an obstacle in the training, then they shouldn't use the toy as the reward! And stepping on the leash to catch the dog, just so they can use a toy as a reward also seems counter productive.

Sounds like you are in a difficult position! As you have intimated, the key to success is the foundation training and choosing the proper reward - so that it at the very least, doesn't interfere with the training!